Author(s): Paul Gilding

Economics

Human civilisation and the economy have now grown so large that we have passed the limits of the planet to support any further growth in the current model. The science is clear. We have entered a period of great crisis and change, a synchronised, related crash of the economy and the ecosystem, with food shortages, climate catastrophes, massive economic change and global geopolitical instability. And as Gilding argues, we need to get ready for it now because we can manage our way through it, but only if we acknowledge it's coming and are clear on the way forward. We can choose to let a dog-eat-dog response drive us into ever smaller conflicting groups of regions, nations and communities - of defensive and scared people fighting over what's left, fighting for physical survival. In that scenario, we would lose hundreds of thousands years of human development and have to effectively start again, just hoping the cycle wouldn't repeat itself. Or, we can choose to consciously overcome that tendency, as we have in the past. We can draw on what is great about being human and dig deep to express our highest potential - the potential that can take us through the coming crisis and out the other side to a stronger, safer and more advanced civilisation.